Now that your hospital or medical practice has an EMR, you are in a unique situation to utilize this resource for several other research capabilities beyond quality reporting. EMRs provide an outlet to access rich clinical data for research use, along with several other secondary uses. They can provide a platform for clinical recruitment, along with recently being recommended to use to document extreme situations, evaluating devices and drugs to provide early information helping to identify side effects that may have been missed during clinical trials.

What are additional secondary uses for EMRs that you have seen in your medical practice places and hospitals? Please share below and feel free to read more on this topic.

I had the pleasure of meeting with a number of Biomedical Engineering and Clinical Engineers at CIMIT (Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology) in Cambridge this week. Lot’s to tell you (more to come), but perhaps nothing more timely then “time” itself. With the eventual “Meaningful Use” requirement to include the integration of Medical Devices to your EHR as a means to correlate patient vitals over time – we have big problems looming as an industry.

Under the direction of Dr. Julian Goldman at CIMIT, researcher Pratyusha Mattegunta, MS, BME and team examined 100’s of medical devices across a particular healthcare system – most of which were network attached. What the team found was an overwhelming number of medical devices with incorrect time and date. Some devices in fact were running some “very advanced firmware” that was able to predict the patient’s condition — Sometimes as much as 6+ months into the future! Read More »

Some of the individuals posting to this site, including the moderators, work for Cisco Systems. Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not of Cisco. The content is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Cisco or any other party. This site is available to the public. No information you consider confidential should be posted to this site. By posting you agree to be solely responsible for the content of all information you contribute, link to, or otherwise upload to the Website and release Cisco from any liability related to your use of the Website. You also grant to Cisco a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free and fully-paid, transferable (including rights to sublicense) right to exercise all copyright, publicity, and moral rights with respect to any original content you provide. The comments are moderated. Comments will appear as soon as they are approved by the moderator.